Ariel Lawhon’s newest novel, The Frozen River, is an engrossing historical mystery inspired by the life of someone most of us have never heard of—Martha Ballard, a renowned eighteenth-century midwife. The real-life Ballard, who was born in 1735 and died in 1812, delivered over a thousand babies in her career and never lost a mother in childbirth. Interestingly, Martha Ballard was the great-aunt of Clara Barton who founded the American Red Cross and the great-great-grandmother of Mary Hobart, one of the first female physicians in the United States.
The setting is the small town of Hallowell, Maine,1789 in what the town would call the “Year of the Long Winter” because brutal wind and numbing cold lasted six months. The Kennebec River is beginning to freeze and the tangled broken body of a man named Joshua Burgess has been discovered an inch below he icy surface. When midwife and healer Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body to determine the cause of death, she deduces that the man’s death was not normal based on rope markings upon his neck, bruising on his body, and other factors. Rather, it appears that he was murdered. The powers-that-be, initially do not give credence to Martha’s observations about the frozen body’s death, especially when Dr. Benjamin Page, the local, but Harvard-educated physician, pronounces that there didn’t appear to be foul play and the death certainly was accidental.
Martha has inside knowledge of every birth and death in Hallowell. Taught to read and write by Ephraim, her loving husband, she maintains in her diary a daily record of happenings, including her healing history, secrets, and her close-knit family’s personal life. A couple of months before she appraised the dead man, Martha documented in her diary about being called to examine a neighbor, Rebecca Foster, who was visibly pregnant and who alleged rape by two of the town’s respected gentlemen when her husband, Reverend Isaac Foster, was away. The accused men deny the charges. The deceased man, though, happens to be one of the men accused of raping Rebecca months earlier. The other alleged rapist is Colonel Joseph North, a powerful judge held in high regard in the community. Martha refuses to stop asking questions as an advocate for another woman. Eventually a trial date for the rape is set, Martha is called to testify, and her diary is shown as evidence.
Fascinating accounts of how women were treated during the eighteenth century in New England are portrayed in Lawhon’s novel. Women were generally considered less than men with a rare woman able to read and write. Much of Martha’s and her daughters’ time was immersed in everyday household chores such as making candles, baking bread, weaving, killing chickens and providing meals. Also, in the judicia process a woman was not permitted to testify in court unless her husband or father was present. A woman often was charged with fornication out of wedlock, while a man was not subject to consequences. A male physician’s word was respected whereas that of a female midwife was not, regardless of a midwife’s vast experience and knowledge of a woman’s body.
The author’s research is evident in this layered small town whodunnit that takes place over a period of six months. Ariel Lawhon’s storytelling highlights the courage of Martha Ballard, an assertive champion for fairness and justice for women during the post-American Revolution period. The reader will find interesting aspects of a time when the Constitution existed as the country’s founding document for only two and a half years, and concepts such as due process and legal matters differed from those of today.
The Frozen River is a novel I am pleased to recommend to you, Grandezza readers.
Note that In her closing notes at the end of the novel Lawhon recommends anyone interested in learning more about Martha Ballard’s role in history to pick up a copy of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography A Midwife’s Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.
